22

In my office's building there is a stone-age LAN rack with some Ethernet ports I've never seen before. I need to find the name of this ports, if they have one, and then buy some cables or adapters.

Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to dismount the whole thing and connect the cables to a normal RJ45 rack.

All the cables connected to the front of the rack have a RJ45 male on the other end. On the rack I can read AT&T 110DW2-100. I checked the cables, no hints on them.

Here you can see a pic of the ports and some cables connected to the switch:

enter image description here

Does anyone know the name of these ports?

HopelessN00b
  • 53,385
  • 32
  • 133
  • 208
Alessandro Cappello
  • 323
  • 2
  • 8

3 Answers3

24

It's just a 110 wiring block. More or less a type of punch down block.

(According to a quick Googling, that wiring block is generally Cat5e compliant these days, so you could use it for a 100Mbit network connection). Instead of a patch panel Which has a set number of jacks pre-sized and pre-wired to a certain standard (like RJ45 jacks or RJ 12 jacks or whatever other standard), it's manufactured with exposed wire pairs so that it can be used for different standards easily (and is why teclos use them over patch panels that are fabricated for a specific standard only).

They could use that block for any number of different types of data connections, instead of being restricted to one. The drawback, which you note, is that they won't take a standard RJ45 connector, and require those odd plugs instead. Being for a 110 wiring block, they take 110 plugs. Though, actually, like a punch down panel, you could strip one end of your cable, and attach the individual wires to the individual slots on the wiring block as well, and it would work.

Here's an install guide for a 100 wiring block I found (with pictures) that might help give you a better sense of what that thing is - a standard plastic block with a bunch of wires connected to it... a description which would also apply just as accurately to the RJ-45 patch panels you're more familiar with.

HopelessN00b
  • 53,385
  • 32
  • 133
  • 208
9

Those are 110 punch down blocks with 110 to RJ45 cables.

http://store.cablesplususa.com/110-block-patching-110-to-rj45-patch-cords.html

DanBig
  • 11,393
  • 1
  • 28
  • 53
6

That's called an AT&T MD110 punch-down patch panel from the late-80's/early-90's - I used them, they were 10Mbps only.

Chopper3
  • 100,240
  • 9
  • 106
  • 238
  • 2
    Fast Ethernet (100Mbps/100Base-TX) was introduced in 1995, so it's unsurprising you wouldn't have seen them used at that speed! They'd likely work OK for 100Mbps though. – psmears Feb 25 '15 at 20:41
  • 1
    Importantly though I don't believe they were ratified to work at 100Mbps - I can remember the discussions from back then and was involved in a refit of a building to proper Cat5 due to this. And yes, I am old :( – Chopper3 Feb 26 '15 at 08:44
  • Chill out you're only 45. I'll never understand the predisposition of some more experienced individuals in our field who feel the need to make reference to their age at every opportunity! – Lightness Races in Orbit Feb 26 '15 at 18:19
  • @LightnessRacesinOrbit Good google-foo :) – Chopper3 Feb 26 '15 at 21:47